At Beanstalk Academy in Brooklyn, New York, building principal Niasha Green manages a private child care center. Her lead preschool teachers are paid $55,000 a year, while similar jobs teaching young children at schools run by the Department of Education pay at least $68,902, with regular raises for seniority.
That pay gap makes it difficult to keep experienced staff, and Green estimates that one in three private center-based preschool teachers in the city eventually move into public school-based jobs, where salaries and benefits are better.
Beanstalk Academy, which serves 103 children, relies on a mix of tuition and child care subsidies, which makes it difficult to offer meaningful raises. “We don’t have the resources or the funds to say, ‘Hey, every year, let’s give you a dollar more,’” said Grant.
Across the country, 555,000 preschool teachers earn a median wage of just under $18 an hour, far less than the roughly $30 an hour earned by elementary school teachers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In states like New York, where minimum wages are higher and government support is more robust, early childhood educators tend to earn more. But the field remains divided between public school-based preschools, where salaries are often tied to elementary school systems, and private centers that rely on a mix of tuition, vouchers, subsidies, and reimbursements that often do not cover the full cost of care.
“One system treats earlier education as public infrastructure, while the other treats it as a private market service,” said Hyeonjeong Lee, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. “That structural difference is what ultimately drives the pay and resource divide between the two.”
The imbalance has become more glaring as pandemic relief money has faded. While federal stabilization funding propped up providers temporarily, much of that aid has now expired, leaving centers to absorb higher costs on their own while still trying to recruit and keep staff.
This is also happening as child care is becoming harder for families to afford, not easier. The government considers child care affordable when it costs under 7% of a family’s income, but many families pay for private care well above that level. In New York, where Grant is from, the average cost of private preschool was $17,343, according to 2024 data. Child care costs have also risen faster than overall inflation since 2024.
However, rising preschool tuition does not automatically translate to higher wages. Labor is the highest cost in child care, accounting for about 56% of preschool program expenses. Centers also have to cover rent, benefits, and other operating costs, while strict staffing regulations limit how much they can grow enrollment to spread expenses around. In practice, this means that even when tuition increases, there is little money left to turn into predictable pay increases.
This is especially true in a system where many private centers are not funded by tuition alone. They often serve a mix of families paying market rates and children whose care is partly subsidized. Governments often reimburse providers at preset rates that are lower than the true cost of delivering care, which can sharply limit what a center can pay workers.
“The more you blend funding, the more complex it is to navigate,” said Milagros Nores, co-director for research at the National Institute for Early Education Research. “There’s no organized system. It’s just a patchwork of pieces and a patchwork of revenues.”
This structure is part of why the wage gap persists, even in states that have moved toward universal pre-K. Governments fully fund public school-linked classrooms, but they do not necessarily lift pay at private centers. In New York, private center-based pre-K teachers make $13 less per hour than their public counterparts, essentially creating a two-tiered labor market for the same work.
The result is churn. Private center teachers leave for public school-based preschool jobs that offer better pay and benefits, making it difficult to keep private classrooms fully staffed or expand capacity.
When centers can’t keep staff, parents–particularly mothers–scramble for care alternatives by using leave, cutting hours, or leaving their jobs altogether. “The system has reached a breaking point where long‑standing under-investment is starting to affect supply stability and access in very visible ways,” said researcher Hyeonjeong Lee.
One city is working to confront the wage problem directly. Washington, D.C.’s Pay Equity Fund uses public money to boost compensation for early educators and bring it closer to K-3 levels. The fund has also helped with recruitment and retention and improved conditions for providers, even though substantial gaps between public and nonpublic pay remain.
At Capitol Hill Learning Group, Head of School Martha Herndon has seen what that extra money can mean. Her school is funded by tuition and D.C.’s pay equity program, where her teachers can receive up to $4,400 in quarterly supplements, depending on their credentials.
Herndon’s school operates part-time, but if her teachers were full-time, she estimates they would earn roughly the nonpublic D.C. average of $75,000, in part because of the pay equity fund.
Still, the model has limits. The program is not accepting new participants, and the mayor has proposed cuts that could weaken one of the country’s most ambitious attempts to close the child care wage gap. “For now, we have this, but we may not have it in the future,” said Herndon. “I’ve just kind of tried to make sure my staff understands that.”
For Herndon, the value of the program is obvious, despite the bureaucracy. Regardless of wage improvement efforts, private centers still run on thin margins, and providers have to think about staffing, paperwork, and funding. Even with the Pay Equity Fund, managing a private preschool center is anything but easy. “Running a program like this, it just takes everything you have,” Herndon said.